It was now February.
The movie Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie: Rebellion was released during the new year holiday slot.
Madoka Magica was quite popular in Japan, but its movie couldn't achieve such exaggerated box office results as famous animated films like Your Name and Spirited Away. Its audience was limited to those who had watched the TV series, and it didn't have the same insane popularity as Demon Slayer.
Over the seven days of the new year holiday slot, the total box office was fixed at 89 billion yen, with a final forecast of around 150 to 160 billion yen, ranking third in this year's new year holiday slot.
This data had exceeded market expectations.
Rei didn't think every work he released could surpass his past achievements. Even if he had won the championship in the new year holiday slot many times before, it didn't mean every work he released would achieve such results.
Based on Madoka Magica's fan base, these results for its movie were sufficient.
As for the industry, no one came out with ridiculous comments about Shirogane being at his wit's end because of this.
Hayao Miyazaki doesn't break box office records with every single work either, yet that doesn't hinder his reputation as Japan's number one animated film director.
The bulk of animation revenue comes from merchandise, and the sales of Madoka Magica merchandise during the new year holidays were even more exaggerated.
Winter ended like this, and spring arrived.
Starting from April, Rei's new romance anime Kimi ni Todoke, released in Japan, began broadcasting on Kyoto Television.
This work truly shattered the perceptions of Japan fans and industry peers regarding Rei.
A romance manga wasn't strange.
But Kimi ni Todoke was a shoujo manga with a female protagonist?
This was insane.
A promising young man nearly thirty years old, the top-ranked male anime creator in Japan's history, a tycoon with trillions of yen in assets, a famous landlord of several ACGN fan commercial districts in Tokyo, whose wife was a famous first-tier beautiful mangaka in Japan.
Shirogane, in the fourteenth year of his career, tried his hand at shoujo manga creation, something he had never attempted before.
What's even more ridiculous was that the first episode of Kimi ni Todoke was so addictive.
The story followed a high school girl who, due to various misunderstandings since childhood, was mistaken by her classmates for being able to attract ghosts and causing misfortune to those who contacted her, and after the first episode finished broadcasting.
"It even brought out the maiden heart in a guy like me."
"I find it strange. Shirogane-sensei's pure romance series and shoujo manga have such great emotional scenes. Why are the emotional scenes in Bleach and Naruto so trashy and immersion-breaking?"
"Battle shonen shouldn't have romance plots. Looking at the history of manga worldwide, romance in battle shonen is always criticized. Hot-blooded action and romance just can't fuse well to create a chemical reaction."
"But the characters Orihime Inoue and Sakura were really terrible. I want to skip whenever I see their plotlines."
"It has to be Kimi ni Todoke. It made me feel the sense of youth from my high school days. The first episode really moved me to tears."
"As a guy who's been watching Shirogane-sensei's works since high school, this is my first time watching shoujo manga. Surprisingly, it made my heart flutter. No wonder my wife likes shoujo manga and female-oriented TV dramas. I'm going to catch up on some related classics."
"Come on, brother upstairs, Shirogane-sensei's shoujo manga is different from others. While other female artists' shoujo manga are also noteworthy, only Kimi ni Todoke could move me from the first episode. All I can say is that his god-like status in the anime world isn't luck. Shirogane really can handle any genre with ease."
"I only watched Kimi ni Todoke because of Shirogane's name. All I can say is it far exceeded my imagination. It's the first shoujo anime I've ever followed."
"I originally thought Shirogane-sensei's new works this year wouldn't be much to look at. Now I've changed my mind for good."
It wasn't because it came from Rei's current name that Japan anime fans habitually praised this work.
Romance works just have less commercial value than shonen battle anime, but in terms of the number of genre fans, they don't lose out that significantly to the former.
Among the works accumulated in the Japan manga industry in Rei's previous life, Kimi ni Todoke was also a top-tier work in this genre, with its manga tankobon sales per volume passing a million, similar to One-Punch Man's data.
The outside world's praise for this work was secondary. After Kimi ni Todoke began broadcasting, Rei's wife Miyu was a bit dazed.
"Ah, so you've actually always known how to create shoujo anime?"
Starting her career with shoujo manga, she was now working on fantasy-themed works, but she always had a special affection for the genre.
Now she discovered that her husband could not only create male-oriented romance manga but also female-oriented shoujo manga.
After watching the first episode of Kimi ni Todoke, the delicate portrayal of the female lead's inner thoughts was so immersive that even she, a woman, didn't feel any sense of dissonance.
"People are always learning, after all," Rei said with a slightly awkward smile while working in his study at home.
"Judging by the protagonist's inner thoughts in this work, you seem to understand girls quite well." Miyu looked at Rei with a strange expression. "Then why are you always such a blockhead when you're with me? I give you all kinds of hints and you don't understand them. Do you really not understand, or are you just pretending?"
"Cough, cough." Rei stood up in a hurry. "What hints? What are you talking about? Also, anime is anime. How can you link anime to reality? Just because I'm good at creating romance anime doesn't mean I'm a romance expert, right? Just because my shoujo manga has a great atmosphere doesn't mean I must understand a woman's heart. My battle shonen manga are so famous, but I'm not a hot-blooded person either."
"Sophistry," Miyu said, not letting Rei off.
"Right, right, right, Dad has a ton of crooked logic, Mom, you can't win an argument with him." Hina turned her head to stir the pot while stopping her drawing on the digital screen next to them. "Maybe Dad actually had many relationships before marrying you, Mom, and he's just keeping it from you."
"Hina, don't stir up trouble here. Otherwise, your anime appreciation time tonight will be used for studying. You're starting kindergarten in the second half of the year. I'll hire a few more tutors for you." Rei looked at this troublesome daughter with an unkind gaze.
Hina, who was wearing pigtails and happily watching her parents bicker, shrank her neck and turned pale at hearing this, losing her energy on the spot.
Miyu didn't take her daughter's words to heart.
She had been watching Rei from high school through university.
If Rei could simultaneously create two or more works, run a company, create music, do various roadshows, fan meetings, and signing sessions, and still manage to have some underground relationship without her knowing.
Hehe, then Rei certainly wouldn't be a person from Earth.
Even a time management master couldn't be this powerful.
"It's so frustrating." Miyu sighed.
Rei knew what she was upset about.
For a mangaka who debuted with shoujo manga to find her husband is even better at the genre than she is, that would be quite a blow.
"I'm also a genius mangaka. Compared to you, the gap is just too big," Miyu said.
"People always grow. Maybe your talent will be fully revealed in the future," Rei comforted her.
Comparing someone with Rei in Japan wasn't just comparing him to one person, but competing with dozens or hundreds of genius mangaka from his previous life at the same time. It would be a miracle to win.
"Don't worry, Mom, when I grow up, I'll become a genius more powerful than Dad. Then I'll step on Dad and get revenge for you." Hina continued at this point.
"Hehe." Miyu looked at her daughter, her eyes full of pity.
It's common for children to take their parents as goals, but for this family.
Taking Rei as a goal for struggle is a path of suffering. She then thought that she wasn't the only one in this house suffering from this, and her heart felt balanced again, so she began to encourage her daughter.
The family playfulness soon ended, and Miyu reminded Rei.
"Recently, there's been more negative news about your work, Bleach, than before."
Miyu didn't elaborate, but Rei understood what she was referring to.
The Big Three were the three big laborer manga of his previous life.
The curse none of these three works escaped was the collapse of their reputation in the later stages.
Bleach was considered the worst collapse in Rei's previous life. Once the Thousand-Year Blood War arc came out, it was mocked by the entire internet.
Naruto wasn't much better. The power balance basically collapsed in the later stages of the Fourth Great Ninja War.
As for One Piece, it changed after the Marineford War. This can be seen from the fact that its tankobon sales dropped from a peak of over thirty million copies a year to only a few million in his previous life.
This can't be simply attributed to a weak manga market or the impact of online manga on the physical market. Otherwise, how would you explain Demon Slayer selling eighty million tankobon copies in a single year during the same period? The ACGN fan masses in the Japan region had the purchasing power, but the fact that One Piece's own appeal declined in the later stages, causing a significant drop in tankobon sales, was an undeniable truth.
The reason not many people criticized these three works during that period in Rei's previous life was that there were too many ridiculous successors later. Attack on Titan, Fairy Tail, Jujutsu Kaisen, the Oshi no Ko ending, and so on were even more prominent.
The successors were so bad they got zero points, which made the predecessors actually look like honor students.
In the Japan dimension, Bleach, the shortest of the three big manga, had entered its middle-to-late stages. The moment Ulquiorra's Resurrección: Segunda Etapa was crushed and toyed with by Hollow Ichigo was the peak of this manga.
The subsequent plot of the Soul Society captains fighting the other Espada seemed long and tedious.
It wasn't that these plots were bad, but that Bleach's portrayal of the captain-level characters was slightly weak, far from the flesh-and-blood portrayal of the crew members in One Piece or the Konoha 11 in Naruto.
The audience had no sense of immersion in these captain-level battles against the Espada, and the logic of the power levels was very blurred, with the results of the duels being comparable to the nonsensical talk in Yu-Gi-Oh!. The level of excitement declined, and Japan viewers would find it dull as they watched.
It won't just be Bleach. The same issues will appear in Naruto later, and the same issues will appear in One Piece in the plot five or six years from now.
Rei didn't have a very good solution for this.
These issues are common ailments of long-running manga. Any work will be like this if it goes on long enough. Even the original authors couldn't solve it, and he was the same.
He could only use reader feedback from the later stages of the works in his previous life to delete some illogical plots, compress boring ones, and change some contradictory settings.
For example, the title of the Third Hokage being the strongest in Naruto.
The Haki setting that appeared late in One Piece should be used by some top-tier experts in the early stages. For example, during the Enies Lobby arc when fighting Rob Lucci, the CP9 members should have mastered the basic application of Haki in addition to the Six Powers.
The confrontation between the three Admirals and Whitebeard during the Marineford War, as well as the plot of Whitebeard's subordinates ambushing him, should all have specific manifestations of Haki usage.
Especially the most crucial parts, like the "Nika Fruit" in the later plot and the "Dragon-Dragon Fruit, Mythical Zoan, Model: Nidhogg" which is as famous as the Nika Fruit. This important information could actually be revealed through some important but minor characters, like Shanks or Mihawk, during casual conversation around the two or three hundredth chapter to plant a foreshadowing.
This way, when the plot appears in the seven or eight hundredth episode of the anime, it won't be blasted by a large number of fans as a Deus Ex Machina like in his previous life.
Knowing the issues that appeared later in those works in his previous life, it wasn't hard to work backward and apply patches in the early plot.
The world-building of power systems in an imaginary world like battle shonen doesn't need to be too rigorous, as long as it's self-consistent.
To ask for these works to maintain the same good reputation from start to finish in the Japan dimension was too much, but it should be possible to turn plots that fans might have heavily criticized into something everyone can accept.
"Long-running anime have many problems in the later stages, no question. Even I find it hard to handle these issues perfectly." Rei pondered for a moment and then looked at his wife with a smile. "I will do my best so that after they are finished, they can still be loved and praised by the vast majority of fans."
Miyu nodded at that.
She was a mangaka herself and knew that once a manga passes one or two hundred chapters, the difficulty of creation increases exponentially.
From the serialization process of the Big Three, she could see some shortcomings in the works.
This showed that Rei was still within the realm of humanity and had his limits in creation. Rei could only infinitely approach the realm of a god in the field of anime, but he was still human. This put her mind at ease.
If Rei were truly as powerful as a god, the future development of Japan's anime industry would be too boring. The entire industry would have been killed off by him.